untouched at his side.

A few days after the adjournment, having then decided not to sign the
bill, he issued a proclamation in which he said concerning it, that he
was "unprepared by a formal approval of [it] to be inflexibly committed
to any single plan of restoration;" that he was also "unprepared to
declare that the free-state constitutions and governments, already
adopted and installed in Arkansas and Louisiana, [should] be set aside
and held for naught, thereby repelling and discouraging the loyal
citizens, who have set up the same, as to further effort;" also that he
was unprepared to "declare a constitutional competency in Congress to
abolish slavery in the States." Yet he also said that he was fully
satisfied that the system proposed in the bill was "_one_ very proper
plan" for the loyal people of any State to adopt, and that he should be
ready to aid in such adoption upon any opportunity. In a word, his
objection to the bill lay chiefly in the fact that it established one
single and exclusive process for reconstruction. The rigid exclusiveness
seemed to him a serious error. Upon his part, in putting forth his own
plan, he had taken much pains distinctly to keep out this
characteristic, and to have it clearly understood that his proposition
was not designed as "a procrustean bed, to which exact conformity was to
be indispensable;" it was not _the only_ method, but only _a_ method.

So soon as it was known that the President would not sign the bill, a
vehement cry of wrath broke from all its more ardent friends. H.W. Davis
and B.F. Wade, combative men, and leaders in their party, who expected
their opinion to be respected, published in the New York "Tribune" an
address "To the Supporters of the Government." In unbridled language
they charged "encroachments of the executive on the authority of
Congress." They even impugned the honesty of the President's purpose in
words of direct personal insult; for they said: "The President, by
preventing this bill from becoming a law, holds the electoral votes of
the rebel States at the dictation of his personal ambition.... If
electors for president be allowed to be chosen in either of those States
[Louisiana or Arkansas], a sinister light will be cast on [his]
motives." They alleged that "a more studied outrage on the legislative
authority of the people has never been perpetrated." They stigmatized
this "rash and fatal act" as "a blow at the friends of the
administration, a